With bad news after bad news when it comes to consumer rights in relation to software and copyright, it's always refreshing to see that there are still people in high places who aren't yet bought by big content. Late last week, a major battle was won for consumer rights in Switzerland: Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court has ruled that IP addresses are personal information, and therefore, fall under the country's strict privacy laws, and may not be used by anti-piracy companies.

I'm really a strong FLOSS advocate and participant. Yet, I think one of the drawback of giving away almost all of the software for free (as in beer) is that people get used to get everything for free. But FLOSS has a huge number of advantages so I'm still a strong supporter. (And yeah, I know open source doesn't mean free as in beer, yet it is the case in the vast majority of the cases).

But really, this is the same with music/movies downloading. People, especially the young generations, tend to think this is free. And it's just not. Recording a CD is costly, writing 20'000 lines of code takes some monthes of work. And I'm not thinking about the big music corps, but about the indie artist or developer (like me).

In the meantime, I very much agree with the philosophy behind Thom's comments. I just think we need to find a copyright/economic model where we can get rid of the illusion of 'everything is free as in beer' and yet allow people to share and enhance what they like.